This past weekend the Board of Directors, some Advisory Board members and I journeyed to the mecca of Mount Bethel, PA, for our 2nd annual retreat. All of a sudden the weekend was over and although so many things got done---- I could have stayed another two weeks straight. We’re not content with chugging along the way we have. The way we’ve been rolling as a non-profit and a group has worked, girls have been educated and people have drunk clean water--- but it’s time for more.  We refined our roles as individuals and as a team. We talked about core values, we defined them and discussed how we can use them to articulate the projects we will take on and the ones we won’t.  We talked about alignments and misalignments (and learned from Jim Collins). We mapped out the calendar for 2013 including a dance event and banquet—we picked a date for the 6k race.  We discussed ways that we, COME UNITY, can serve the people around us, not just the people overseas. We dreamt of ways to get people on the outskirts of ‘us’ more on the inside. We plan to have some volunteer nights at the COME UNITY World Headquarters, so people can have an opportunity to be hands on – instead of just participating by coming to a fundraiser or reading a blog update.

Best of all, our team bonded. United we are able to understand how each of our responsibilities fits into the whole and so we can then do more together. Saturday, after we had worked from 9:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night – we spent some time together in the amazingly awesome house we stayed at being silly.  The ‘Hobbit House’ as we called it, looked more like a castle. In front sat a molar shaped pond thanks to the former owner and his career choice, inside were winding stairwells, a huge brick fireplaces, round tables and straight back chairs that all made us feel pretty fortunate. After we captured a few group photos we made sure the antlers were all safely returned to their home on the shelf.